Messrs Rees and Wi Pere.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 186, 23 August 1888, Page 2

Messrs Rees and Wi Pere.

“ Touchstone,” a writer formerly well known in Gisborne, makes the following comments on the Rees-Wi Pere mission :— Halloo, two New Zealanders at Home on the colonisation racket again. Ah, is that so ? I thought the emigration lecturing business had been stopped. Who are these two jokers ? Wi Pere, of Gisborne, who stood against Jimmy Carroll at the last election is one, and Rees, W. L. Rees, the Only Rees, is the other. What’s their little game ?

They’ve gone Home to try and get a lot of people with capital to come out and settle the lands on the East Coast. Well, that’s a very laudable object to have in view surely. Poverty Bay and East Coast generally only wants men and money, and then it will be one of the grandest and most goa-head districts in New Zealand. Yes, that’s so, but I’m rather doubtful from what I hear, whether Mr Rees’ scheme is altogether what is wanted. How’s that ?

You remember the N.Z. Native Land Settlement Company, and the grand flourish of trumpets with which it was started. I do, and so do a good many more. I see the company’s to be wound up. Yes, it’s been a ghastly failure. Hardly

any real settlement has been done at all. The natives were paid in scrip, and parted with their lands in some cases only to find that the scrip was worthless. A certain great financial institution is also mixed up in the matter and they want to ‘unload’ very badly. Rumour in Gisborne hath it that Mr Rees has really been sent Home as an agent for this institution, with orders to get purchasers at any price and on any terms. Well, if the banks advanced the money they’ve a right to realise—besides, the land will be settled.

But that’s not all. The poor shareholders in the company have dropped a lot of money, and many of them, in Gisborne at least, say some hard things with respect to the way a few individuals have worked the affair. Latterly, many of the shareholders have refused to pay their calls and there’s likely to be a most unholy rumpus before long about the affair. It will be very interesting whether Mr Rees can induce people to come out. I hope he won’t get any to settle on the Company’s land until the present troubles are settled, for if all this is correct that I hear, there is a long course of litigation in store over these lands. Well, there’s plenty of other land up there besides the Company’s. It would be a good thing if Mr Rees could get some of it settled. Indeed it would, and he ought to make an excellent emigration agent. He’s a fine speaker, and can put things in a very favourable light. I see he’s trying to get the English Government to help him. Yes he’s petitioning through Broadhurst, the labor member for Nottingham. He has some scheme for labor settlements, which he thinks the English Government should take up and believe. One of his objects in going Home was to publish a work on the subject. Well, I wish him luck. He’s a clever fellow and he’s got a clever fellow along with him. Wi Pere is as smart as they make him. Between the pair of them, they ought to work the oracle.